Yesterday, I was walking around Myeong-dong, the best-known shopping area in Seoul. I noticed something very strange. The Myeong-dong that I knew was a vibrant, bustling, energetic, and fashionable place full of shoppers.The Myeong-dong that I saw yesterday was exactly the opposite. The place was lethargic, no shoppers, and everybody staring with no focus. How could that be?The story goes back to 2018, 12 years ago from today. The Korean economy was booming with smiles from everyone and shoppers everywhere. Korea then elected a new president who had a great vision to make Korea a better place to live, especially for those struggling to make ends meet and for those who had been treated badly by the rich and the powerful. The new president had an admirable trait for social justice and humanitarian spirit.The new president and his intelligent economic advisers, full of empathy for the poor, began to carry out ambitious programs to make their noble dreams a reality. At that time, many Koreans thought that the new leaders were truly great ones.These leaders proposed to require all businesses to convert part-time employees to full-time employees with higher wages and benefits. They even gave subsidies to businesses that might have had difficulty in paying for the conversion. It was not clear in the beginning, but many later noticed that businesses stopped hiring.These leaders raised the minimum wage by a large margin, thinking that it was criminal to pay such low wages. Unknown to them there were many micro-businesses headed by hard-working women, barely surviving with helpers who were paid the minimum wage. I recall that in 2018, streets were full of these micro-businesses.When many of these businesses voiced their concerns that their businesses could not survive the new high minimum wage, the good leaders required property owners to lower rents so that these micro-businesses could survive. Again, it was not clear in the beginning, but many later noticed that property owners stopped repairing the broken windows, leaking roofs, and peeling wallpaper. Most micro-businesses eventually had to close, because customers stopped coming to filthy places that property owners stopped even providing bare minimal maintenance.These leaders also voiced their strong support for organized unions whose leaders enjoyed one of the highest earnings during the boom years. When these unions led to the temporary closure of their plants, the leaders pressured business owners to accept their demands, whatever they might have been.It was not clear in the beginning, but many later noticed that new Korean businesses were showing up all over the world with the exception of in Korea.These leaders, who were elected owing to street demonstrators called the "candlelit generation" at the time, proposed to reward these demonstrators by proposing that the time they demonstrated should be counted as work experience in pay and promotion decisions. When opposition to the measure grew louder, the leaders temporarily gave up on the idea of rewarding street demonstrators who were instrumental in their election.It was too late, however. Whenever there were controversial issues, the number of people participating in street demonstration grew larger and larger. These demonstrations became more frequent as well, threatening the already fragile economy.Finally, these benevolent leaders came up with a brilliant idea that owners and chief executive officers of large corporations had to be reined in to make sure of their support for the numerous government programs that the leaders had designed to help the poor and the weak. The justice-minded leaders began to prosecute CEOs of large corporations as a lesson to all businesses.It was not clear in the beginning, but many began to notice that large businesses left their CEO positions vacant because no one applied for them. Soon, these large businesses became small- and medium-sized businesses with many employees becoming no longer employed.By the time there was a new election in 2022, and new leaders replaced old reform-minded visionary leaders, the Korean economy was on the verge of collapse and the crippled economy was barely functioning.Today, early in 2030, I saw many arguing on TV over who was responsible for the crippled economy. The consensus appeared to focus on reform-minded leaders of 2018. The latest program on TV then focused on who among those 2018 leaders was responsible for the demise of the once-booming Korean economy.Economic advisers of those early days blamed the president during 2018, stating that they just followed orders, and it was all the president's fault. The president blamed economic advisers, stating that the policies were all designed by economic advisers who convinced him of their success.Today, I came back to Myeong-dong to look around, feeling sorry for economic advisers who never understood "Econ 101" and the 2018 president whose brain never quite matched his golden heart.

Chang Se-moon (changsemoon@yahoo.com) is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.